Sony/Columbia will release an untitled film set during the 1960s space race starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum on July 12. The studio has also set “Wolfs,” a thriller starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt and directed by “Spider-Man: No Way Home” filmmaker Jon Watts for release on Sept. 20.

The pair of upcoming films continues a theatrical distribution partnership between Sony and Apple that began with last month’s Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” a $200 million-plus historical epic whose budget was footed entirely by Apple and grossed $189 million at the global box office.

By normal standards, that amounts to a box office flop, but Apple’s high-spending, partnership-filled strategy is looking for profits later down the line. Apple is hoping that a theatrical release for its films will increase awareness and interest among audiences to see those films later on Apple TV+, increasing its subscriber count.

Sony, meanwhile, gets new additions to its theatrical slate in exchange for a distribution fee rather than having to shoulder any production costs. Apple has also formed partnerships with other studios on films like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” released theatrically by Paramount, and Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle,” which will be released by Universal early next year.

The Johansson/Tatum film, previously known by the working title “Project Artemis,” is filling a summer slot that was previously held by Sony’s “Venom 3” before it was delayed to November after the conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“Wolfs” will fill an early autumn slot and will hit theaters alongside Universal/DreamWorks’ family animated film “The Wild Robot.” It will share theater space with other franchise releases hitting September like Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice 2,” Paramount’s “Transformers One” and Lionsgate’s “Saw XI.”

The post Sony Adds 2 Apple-Produced Films to 2024 Release Slate appeared first on TheWrap.

The No. 1 film this weekend is expected to be Warner Bros./DC’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a sequel to James Wan’s $1.15 billion superhero hit released back in 2018. “Aquaman” earned an opening weekend of $67 million five years ago and reached $100 million in domestic grosses after Christmas Day two days later.

With Christmas Day falling on a Monday this year, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is seeing its four-day opening weekend estimates top out at $40 million, enough to likely make it the No. 1 film this weekend.

But with audiences largely abandoning DC ahead of its reboot under James Gunn and Peter Safran, chances are not looking good for “Aquaman 2” to sustain long-term interest among audiences outside the most devoted of comic book fans, and the film would be fortunate to gross even half of what its predecessor made.

All three DC films released earlier this year — “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle,” — failed to cross $275 million in global grosses. And their combined gross of $526 million is more than 30% short of the $772 million that “The Batman” made alone for the studio in 2022.

Insiders at Warner Bros. told TheWrap they’re still confident that Gunn’s reboot, which will begin with “Superman: Legacy” in 2025, will revive box office buzz for DC when it’s ready. But this year of flops is still a hard fall for a franchise that racked up over $6 billion in global grosses from 2013 to 2019, including cult hits like Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” acclaimed works like Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” and “Joker,” the first comic book movie to win the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award.

If Warner Bros. is to have any box office triumphs this winter, it will have to come from their efforts to revive the struggling movie musical genre. After the studio had a big misfire with “In the Heights” in 2021, while Disney/20th Century had similar struggles with Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” there were questions about whether audiences had suddenly abandoned musicals.

The warm reception for Timothée Chalamet and “Wonka,” which has grossed over $43 million domestic and $155 million worldwide and counting, suggests there may be hope for the genre. While that film tries to leg out over the next several weeks, Warner is sending in another musical, “The Color Purple,” on Christmas Day.

If Chalamet’s star power is allowing “Wonka” to succeed where “Heights” and “Story” failed, then “The Color Purple” will certainly benefit from its loaded cast, which includes Taraji P. Henson, Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, and “Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey. With the SAG-AFTRA strike over, that cast, along with producer Oprah Winfrey, has been out promoting the film in the hopes of building awards buzz.

Exhibition sources told TheWrap that presales for “The Color Purple” have been robust, with trackers projecting $8-10 million grossed on Christmas Day and $37-40 million through New Year’s Eve on Sunday. Reviews have been generally positive with an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score at time of writing.

With a reported budget of at least $90 million before marketing, “The Color Purple” is looking for word-of-mouth and maybe some Oscar buzz in January to keep turnout strong. Black audiences, particularly older ones, will be the core demographic, but post-release buzz could help the film earn cross-demo support in the new year.

Beyond Warner Bros., Universal will try to win over families with “Migration,” the new, original animated film from Illumination. Chris Meledandri’s animation house has been riding high with the wild success of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” but is looking at a much lower opening for this title in the low-to-mid teens.

Since theaters reopened in 2021, there have been several animated box office hits, but they have all been sequels or adaptations of popular pre-existing IP. Films that don’t fit into those categories like Disney’s “Wish” and DreamWorks’ “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken” have fallen by the wayside while Pixar’s “Elemental” needed strong post-release buzz to post a respectable theatrical run after suffering the worst opening in the studio’s history.

Now it’s Illumination’s turn to see if it can get audiences interested in “Migration” without the hook of familiarity. Universal would be thrilled if the film can get even close to the $481 million global run of DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” a year ago, though the bar to theatrical profitability is lower given that the majority of Illumination films are budgeted in the $80-90 million range. Early reviews for “Migration” have skewed positive with a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score.

A slew of other Christmas releases are set to open this weekend to less than $10 million, including Sony’s romantic comedy “Anyone But You” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Sporting a $25 million budget co-financed by SK Global and TSG, the film is projected for a $7 million 4-day opening from 3,000 theaters this weekend.

A24 will also go wide this weekend with “The Iron Claw,” Sean Durkin’s tragic biopic about the Von Erich wrestling family starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White. The film is projected for a $6 million 4-day opening from 2,500 theaters, as A24 is hoping that the film can gain strong word-of-mouth in the southern U.S. where the film takes place. A24 has touted that early access screenings have yielded the strongest audience scores for any film released by the studio among moviegoers outside New York and California.

Finally, Amazon/MGM’s “The Boys in the Boat” and Neon’s “Ferrari” will release wide on Christmas Day, with “Boat” projected for a $3 million opening day total and “Ferrari” headed for $1 million. “The Boys in the Boat,” which is directed by George Clooney, has received mixed reviews with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score.

“Ferrari” was one of the first major indie films to receive interim-agreement approval during the SAG-AFTRA strike, allowing stars Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz to attend the film’s Venice premiere. Neon acquired the $95 million production from STX, but presales for the biopic drama have been soft so far. The film received positive reviews with a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score.

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“Holy Night” is a sequel to the 2021 “Christmas With the Chosen” holiday special for Angel Studios’ hit indie streaming series about Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel. The special set opening day records for Fathom and grossed $13.7 million during its limited engagement.

“Holy Night” isn’t showing quite as strong a start with $4.6 million grossed from 2,094 theaters since its release this past Tuesday, but that is enough to put Fathom’s annual gross total for 2023 at approximately $97 million, the highest ever in the history of the company.

Partnerships with indie companies like Angel Studios and Studio Ghibli distributor GKIDS have helped Fathom expand its slate of offerings to a more diverse array of specialty audiences, with some films forgoing the limited engagement model for longer theatrical runs. Meanwhile, theaters have shown greater interest in screening Fathom limited engagement releases as a way to improve audience turnout on weekends where major studios aren’t releasing top films.

“Going into this year, we saw a need to make some changes to the business model we had employed pre-pandemic, so we drew up some innovative ideas and put them into play,” Ray Nutt, CEO of Fathom Events, said in a statement earlier this week. “We couldn’t be more proud of our contribution to the industry this year and could not be happier about how this new model performed.”

Elsewhere, MGM released Cord Jefferson’s satire “American Fiction” in seven theaters in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, grossing $227,000 for a per theater average of $32,411. The film will expand to 40 theaters in 11 cities for Christmas weekend as it hopes to build up audience buzz ahead of the Golden Globes ceremony and Oscar nominations next month.

“American Fiction” stars Jeffrey Wright as a brilliant but struggling academic and writer who, in a swipe against the stereotypical crime-riddled narratives about Black people that flood pop culture, writes his own novel filled with gang violence, missing fathers and bloodshed. To his shock, the novel becomes a hit, forcing him to pretend that he is an anonymous ex-convict to close the book sale and pay for treatment for his dementia-stricken mother.

“American Fiction” won the coveted audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an award that has led to at least a Best Picture Oscar nomination for 14 of its last 15 winners. Critics have also praised the film, giving it a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Another critically acclaimed film that hit theaters is Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” an austere, sobering drama focused on the family of Rudolf Hoss, a top Nazi commandant at Auschwitz, as they live an idyllic life right next door to the Holocaust.

“The Zone of Interest” will run in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles before expanding wide in January. The film grossed $124,800 this weekend for a per theater average of $31,200. The film, which is Glazer’s first in a decade, won the Grand Prix at Cannes and sports a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Among holdovers, Searchlight’s “Poor Things” expanded to 82 theaters and grossed $1.3 million this weekend for a total of $2.2 million. Searchlight will expand the film to approximately 800 theaters for Christmas weekend.

The post ‘Christmas With the Chosen 2’ Caps Off Record Year for Fathom Events at Specialty Box Office appeared first on TheWrap.

“Wonka” will need legs as it sports a reported $125 million budget before marketing costs. Combined with $112.4 million grossed from overseas markets over the past two weekends, “Wonka” has a running global total of $151 million.

Prior to the pandemic, musicals like “The Greatest Showman” and “Mary Poppins Returns” were able to pull off long-lasting runs during the holidays, posting openings well south of $40 million yet going on to top $170 million in domestic grosses.

Gen Z has been the difference maker for “Wonka,” as 33% of the film’s opening weekend crowd came from the 18-24 demo, showing Timothée Chalamet’s draw among younger audiences.

As the 2023 box office has shown with films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” big-budget films don’t have much hope for success without a buy-in from Gen Z. If “Wonka” continues with strong holds week to week, Chalamet’s status as a generational draw will only grow — something that Warner Bros. is banking on when “Dune: Part Two” starring Chalamet comes out in March.

“Wonka” will face some family competition next weekend from Illumination’s “Migration,” the duck animated film which is getting a no-holds-barred marketing campaign from Universal. But Paul King and Timothée Chalamet’s “Wonka” is getting strong reception, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 84% critics and 91% audience, an A- on CinemaScore — same as “Mary Poppins Returns” — and PostTrak scores of 4.5/5 from kids and general audiences and 5/5 from parents.

In second is Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” with $5.8 million in its fifth weekend. With this result, the “Hunger Games” prequel has crossed $300 million worldwide against a reported $100 million budget.

In third is GKIDS/Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron,” with $5.1 million in its second weekend. While that’s a second-weekend drop of around 59%, it’s substantially better than the frontloaded performance that usually comes from franchise anime films. That’s also enough to push the film past $100 million in global grosses, with its $23 million U.S. total being the highest for a Hayao Miyazaki film before inflation adjustment.

Toho/Emick Media’s “Godzilla Minus One” is in fourth with $4.8 million in its third weekend. With $34.2 million in the U.S., the film ranks among the top 10 highest grossing non-English films in history, before inflation.

Farther down the charts, Fathom Events and Angel Studios released “Christmas With The Chosen: Holy Night,” a sequel to the successful “Christmas With The Chosen” theatrical special for Angel Studios’ hit Christian streaming series, “The Chosen.” “Holy Night” grossed $2.9 million this weekend.

This has been a record year for Fathom, as it is on course to cross $100 million in annual totals for the first time in company history. Partnerships with studios like Angel Studios and GKIDS have allowed Fathom to expand its reach with audiences, while theaters have shown increased interest in event screenings to fill in the gaps left behind by the strike-affected major studio release slate.

Next weekend will see a slew of films hit theaters in limited and wide release, first on Friday and then on Christmas Day the following Monday. Friday releases include Universal/Illumination’s “Migration,” Warner Bros./DC’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” Searchlight’s “All of Us Strangers” and A24’s “The Iron Claw.” Christmas Day releases include Warner Bros.’ “The Color Purple” and Neon’s “Ferrari.”

The post ‘Wonka’ Earns a Sweet $39 Million Domestic, $151 Million Global Box Office Opening appeared first on TheWrap.

That puts Paul King’s family friendly musical prequel to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” at an estimated $38 million opening weekend, firmly within the $35-40 million range projected by trackers.

With a reported $125 million budget before marketing, “Wonka” has a long way to go before it turns a theatrical profit, but has a chance of doing so if it legs out through the holiday season. Reception has been strong across the board with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 84% critics and 90% audience, an A- on CinemaScore, and PostTrak scores of 5/5 from parents and 4.5/5 from kids and general audiences.

Unfortunately for theaters, “Wonka” is making up roughly half of all business at the box office this weekend, as Christmas 2023 will be a much less lucrative period for exhibitors than last year’s “Avatar 2”-fueled bonanza. Overall weekend totals are estimated at $78 million, down 48% from last year.

The No. 2 film on the charts is Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which continues to leg out extraordinarily well with $6 million in its fifth weekend, bringing its total to $145.5 million as it approaches the domestic run of “Fast X.”

Japanese imports “The Boy and the Heron” and “Godzilla Minus One” are just behind with approximately $5 million each. “The Boy and the Heron,” distributed by GKIDS, is dropping 61% from its $12.3 million opening weekend, but that’s still a better hold than most franchise anime films that hit theaters and is enough to make it Hayao Miyazaki’s highest grossing film in the U.S. before inflation with a $23 million two weekend total.

“Godzilla Minus One,” meanwhile, has an estimated U.S. total of $34.4 million, enough to currently rank it seventh among the highest grossing non-English films in the U.S. before inflation adjustment. It needs approximately $10 million to pass the 2013 Eugenio Derbez comedy “Instructions Not Included” to crack the top 5.

The post ‘Wonka’ Cooks Up $38 Million Box Office Opening appeared first on TheWrap.

This is well above the $325,000 that director Paul King’s last film, “Paddington 2,” made from Thursday previews in 2018 and above the $2.5 million mid-week opening day of “The Greatest Showman,” which hit theaters in 2017 without previews.

Warner Bros. is hoping for strong word-of-mouth that will give “Wonka” a “Greatest Showman”-esque run for weeks to come, as that film grossed $173 million in 2017. “Wonka” will need those legs, as it is projected for a $35-40 million domestic opening against a reported $125 million budget.

It will soon be seen whether “Wonka,” with its earnest, family-friendly tone and lighthearted musical numbers, will win over enough families and general audience members to leg out against competition like the upcoming Illumination animated film “Migration.” Critics have been largely favorable towards the film, giving it an 84% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Wonka” will share theaters this weekend with GKIDS/Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron” and Toho/Emick Media’s “Godzilla Minus One,” two Japanese imports that have struck a cord with audiences and are legging out well. “The Boy and the Heron” is expected to drop just 50% from its $12.3 million No. 1 opening — the first for any original anime film — defying the sharp second weekend drops that typically hit franchise anime films.

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While there have been some modest horror-film successes with “The Nun II” and “Evil Dead Rise,” Warner Bros.’ 2023 has been defined by two major events: the studio record-breaking success of “Barbie” and the ignominious end of the DC Extended Universe with three box office bombs. Now, theaters will turn to Warner to drive moviegoer turnout this Christmas with not only “Wonka,” but with “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “The Color Purple.”

The latter two films will come out next weekend. But for now, “Wonka” is currently estimated for a $35 million opening from 4,150 theaters, with a possible chance to reach $40 million if walk-up traffic and word-of-mouth is strong.

That’s not the most thrilling start for a family film packing a $125 million budget before marketing. But as Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian noted, the opening weekend for any December tentpole is only the beginning of the story.

“Studios are looking for their holiday films to leg out for weeks, and just because a film doesn’t have a big December opening doesn’t mean that people won’t discover it during their Christmas break,” Dergarabedian said. “Just look at ‘The Greatest Showman,’ which looked DOA on its opening weekend but then just played all the way through January.”

A run similar to “The Greatest Showman,” which grossed $174.3 million in 2017-18, would be the ideal scenario for “Wonka.” While critics’ consensus seems to be that the film doesn’t hold up to 1971 “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” or to the “Paddington” films made by its director, Paul King, reviews have generally praised the “Wonka” prequel as a fun, heartwarming family adventure with an 84% Rotten Tomatoes score.

“Wonka” is also unlikely to get much competition from other family films currently in theaters like “Trolls Band Together” (produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal) and Disney’s “Wish,” as they seem to have mostly run their course at the box office. The bigger competition will come next weekend from Illumination’s “Migration,” which is getting an all-out marketing campaign from Universal in an effort to establish a new animated franchise.

Whether its through its earnest charms, Chalamet’s performance or its musical numbers, “Wonka” will need to build as much word-of-mouth as possible this weekend before more wide release competitors ender the marketplace. CinemaScore and PostTrak returns will say much more about how far this movie can go than what the opening weekend figure will be.

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“Heron” and “Minus One” were able to pull off the record-breaking weekend to a mix of name recognition, strong critical and audience acclaim, and smart timing by U.S. distributors GKIDS and Emick Media. The success of both films shows how Studio Ghibli and Godzilla, two of Japan’s most well-known cinematic exports, have gained a bigger foothold than ever in the United States and are helping stem the tide for theaters when major Hollywood titles like Walt Disney’s “Wish” falter.

“This is one of the most interesting box office weekends we have ever had,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “It was a very un-Hollywood type of weekend where two films from Japanese cinema captured all the attention.” Dergarabedian added that the Japanese box office-takeover could signal a new period in cinema similar to the 1970s — when audience tastes shifted to darker films like “The Godfather” and “The Exorcist” — where “some moviegoers show a greater willingness to try something different at theaters.”

While Miyazaki, a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, built his name among American anime fans during the 2000s, his highest-grossing film in the U.S. is “Arriety,” a film he wrote but did not direct that grossed $19.1 million in 2012. “The Boy and the Heron” is set to blow that out of the water, having grossed a strong $1 million on Monday in a sign of strong word-of-mouth among arthouse moviegoers.

Meanwhile, “Godzilla Minus One” earned a strong $8 million in its second weekend to claim the No. 3 spot on the charts. Produced by Tokyo-based Toho, the post-WWII kaiju movie has become a cult hit in the U.S. and has grossed $26.4 million through two weekends in theaters — after earning $23 million in Japan.

For animation buffs, “The Boy and the Heron” was a title that had been on their radar for a long time, as it has been marketed as the final film in Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary career. For anime fans, a new Miyazaki film is a true cinematic event much like a new Christopher Nolan film is for audiences around the world.

While the recent rise of anime films in the specialty market has been driven by franchises like “Demon Slayer” and “Dragonball Super,” Miyazaki has built up a name recognition as ubiquitous among western anime fans as any top anime series.

Meanwhile, GKIDS has built up a reputation of its own among Miyazaki’s fans through its annual “Ghibli Fest,” which presents the filmmaker’s work in theaters each spring and has built a marketing base that could easily be used to raise awareness of the U.S. release of “The Boy and the Heron” among the core audience.

“Godzilla Minus One” is also enjoying the fruit of years of work. Toho’s strategy of developing its own “Godzilla” movies in Japan while making a deal with Legendary Pictures to allow the Burbank-based studio to produce separate films for western audiences has preserved the franchise’s image both in its home country and abroad.

Since “Godzilla” has historically had a minimal box office footprint outside of Japan, “Godzilla Minus One” was produced on a thrifty budget of below $15 million in order to ensure that it could turn a profit from Japanese revenue alone. The last Toho installment, “Shin-Godzilla,” turned a profit by grossing a robust $75.3 million in Japan in 2016 but only grossed $1.9 million in the U.S.

In the years since, Legendary and Warner Bros. have made Godzilla into the center of their MonsterVerse with films like “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the latter of which was a key film for theaters during the pandemic rebuilding process and helped keep the franchise in the minds of casual moviegoers.

When “Godzilla Minus One” invaded 2,300 U.S. theaters on Dec. 1, the radioactive dinosaur was much fresher in the minds of Americans who have seen few or none of the 29 Toho-produced “Godzilla” films, which date back to the original 1954 release. There was also little competition from U.S. films outside of the third weekend of a “Hunger Games” prequel (“Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”) and the opening of Beyonce’s “Renaissance” concert film.

Hollywood studios historically avoid releasing major films in early December, as they consider it more advantageous to release them closer to Christmas to take advantage of holiday playtime. That leaves the floor open for specialty titles to fill in the gaps and build buzz to attract moviegoers looking for something fresh.

The lack of mainstream competition spilled over into the second weekend of December, with Warner Bros. holding off on releasing its family film “Wonka” until Dec. 15. That allowed both “The Boy and the Heron” and “Godzilla Minus One” to maintain their screen counts, with “Heron” releasing in 2,200 locations while “Minus One” increased its count to just over 2,500 locations in its second weekend.

With a handful of prominent exceptions — such as “Sound of Freedom,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Asteroid City” — the independent and specialty markets are still in a diminished state compared to pre-COVID times. But a strong release strategy has allowed “The Boy and the Heron” and “Godzilla Minus One” to find greater American box office success than any past Toho or Studio Ghibli title.

“‘Godzilla Minus One’” really performed like a 2010s arthouse film, where the word-of-mouth entirely drove the film, and the momentum got even stronger once the critics caught on as well,” said Dergarabedian. “These movies aren’t going to carry movie theaters with these grosses, but they do send a message about what can work in theaters, which the film industry really needs to rethink.”

The post Inside Japan’s Historic First at U.S. Box Office – With 2 Movies in Top 3 appeared first on TheWrap.

“Poor Things” was released in nine theaters by Searchlight Pictures this weekend and grossed $644,000 for a per theater average of $72,000. That’s the highest average of this awards season and the third highest this year behind only Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” in June ($142,000) and Ari Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid” in April ($80,000).

Originally set for release in September after winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Searchlight moved “Poor Things” to Dec. 8 in the hopes that the SAG-AFTRA strike would be resolved and allow the film’s cast, led by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, to promote the film.

The move paid off, as the “Poor Things” cast joined Lanthimos on the promotional tour over the past few weeks, including a post-screening Q&A this weekend. Along with its critical acclaim, “Poor Things” has won over audiences with a 75% “definite recommend” rating on PostTrak. Audience demos skewed younger with 70% under the age of 35.

“Poor Things” will expand to 17 cities next weekend, hoping to serve as prestige counterprogramming to Warner Bros.’ “Wonka.”

Meanwhile, Neon released “Origin” in just two theaters in New York and Los Angeles for an awards qualifying run ahead of its wide release on Jan. 19. The film grossed $117,000 from those two theaters for an average of $58,500 — the fourth highest for the year.

“Origin” stars Aunjunue Ellis as author Isabel Wilkerson, who goes on a global journey of investigation and discovery while writing her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” The film has been well reviewed with an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Elsewhere, Bleecker Street released a filmed version of the Broadway musical “Waitress” starring Sara Bareilles in 1,217 theaters for a five-day limited engagement, grossing $3.2 million for the No. 8 spot on the charts. The Indian action film “Animal” is also holding well in 622 theaters, grossing $2.2 million in its second weekend for an $11.5 million total.

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Such a result makes Hayao Miyazaki’s new film the first original anime title to open to No. 1 at the U.S. box office, and puts it in position to become Miyazaki’s highest grossing movie in the U.S. after grossing over $85 million in Japan.

While noted by critics to be less accessible than many past Miyazaki films, the director’s devoted fans are still enjoying the film, giving it an A- on CinemaScore and 4.5/5 on PostTrak to go with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 96% critics and 91% audience.

Holdovers complete the rest of the box office top 5, starting with Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” with $9.4 million in its fourth weekend. While not the annual chart-topping success of past “Hunger Games” films, the prequel is legging out very well with a domestic total of $135 million and $279 million worldwide against a $100 million budget.

In third is Toho/Emick Media’s “Godzilla Minus One,” which is riding strong word-of-mouth to an $8.3 million second weekend. Alongside “The Boy and the Heron,” this marks the first time that two Japanese films have charted in the top 5 in the United States.

The latest installment of the 70-year-old kaiju series has struck a chord with an audience that is growing beyond longtime fans, so much so that Emick Media increased the film’s screen count by more than 200 theaters to 2,540 locations. “Godzilla Minus One” now has a two-weekend total of $25.3 million.

Universal/DreamWorks’ “Trolls Band Together” takes fourth with $6.2 million, giving it a domestic total of $83 million after four weekends. It’s been a tepid run for this animated threequel, which has grossed $174 million worldwide against a $95 million budget before marketing, but is well short of the $347 million global total of the first “Trolls” in 2016.

But that’s a better result than Disney’s “Wish,” which is in a tight race for the No. 5 spot with Beyonce’s concert film “Renaissance.” That concert film, distributed by AMC and Variance, took a stiff 74% drop from its $21 million opening weekend to $5.4 million, par for the course for such titles.

“Wish” is set to make the same amount in its third weekend, grossing just $49.4 million in the U.S. after three weekends. Solid holds overseas are easing the pain as “Wish” now has a global total of $105 million, exceeding the miserable $73 million global total of “Strange World” last year, but it’s still a poor result for a film with a $200 million budget and the selling point of being Disney’s 100th anniversary film.

Overall, weekend totals have fallen 26% from last weekend to $73 million, among the lowest weekends of the year but up 90% from last year. It’s a microcosm of how 2023 has seen substantial improvement from last year’s box office but is still short of pre-COVID levels, as this weekend’s totals are 39% down from the second weekend of December in 2019.

Next weekend will see the release of Warner Bros.’ family musical “Wonka” starring Timothee Chalamet, which has been well received with an 83% Rotten Tomatoes score. The film grossed $43 million in 37 overseas markets this weekend and is projected for a $40 million domestic opening next weekend.

“Wonka” will be the first of three big holiday releases from Warner Bros., along with “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “The Color Purple.” With no “Avatar”-sized hits on the slate this year, theaters will be looking for Warner’s films to deliver the grosses that they need during the holidays.

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